Broadcast mediums have continually evolved to transmit various types of information to a group of recipients. Conventional broadcasts of “over the air” TV signals have been overtaken by cable TV and, in recent decades, further surpassed by digital cable and so-called “broadband services” as the wired infrastructure evolved to handle ever increasing bandwidth in a digital format. Coaxial cable networks carrying analog RF signals have been generally superceded by so-called Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) networks, which apply a digital infrastructure and fiber optic trunks to deliver substantially more bandwidth over the same coax cable (e.g. RG6) to a residence once used for carrying analog TV (cable) signals.
Television broadcasts, once referred to as a “radio picture”, have evolved towards a physical wired transport medium, in contrast to telephones which have evolved from wired to predominantly wireless. Nonetheless, the industry has not abandoned over-the-air broadcasts so as to not render deployed television equipment completely obsolete. However, in recent years the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has recognized the predominance of digital transport mediums by converting the national NTSC television format from an analog to a digital medium, rebranded as ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee). Users of older analog equipment now require a specialized converter box if they wish to cling to their analog equipment.
The dominance of digital based user rendering devices (i.e. TVs and various portable renditions of similar viewable devices) has prompted many users to abandon the traditional “over the air” ATSC broadcast in favor of cable TV and broadband based services in a digital form. Nonetheless, the legacy ATSC mode of transport continues to deliver RF broadcast signals to remaining ATSC conversant devices. Until recently, over-the-air broadcasting was analog (NTSC), and therefore was infeasible for rendering on a digital based device.